By Parker Wilson, MBA 2011 Sustainability Immersion is a 6 credit, capstone experience that pulls from all the course work over the two years at UNC Kenan-Flagler’s MBA program. Students’ knowledge is applied to real‐world problem solving in Eastern North Carolina and Kenya. The recommendations and deliverables produced in this course directly impact people’s lives both here in the state and in Africa and beyond. Immersion. The word brings up a variety of images in my head – the most prominent being myself, dog paddling for my life in the middle of the ocean. Our experience as a part of the Sustainability Immersion 2011 was a fairly similar fish-out-of-water experience. With some quick prep work, we arrived in Nairobi, Kenya Read More
Monthly Archives: August 2011
An International Exchange Student Perspective on the Genius of William McDonough
08/25/2011 – 9:29 am
By Miroslav Šulc, undergraduate exchange student from the University of Economics in Prague, Spring 2011 One of the highlights of my exchange at UNC Kenan-Flagler business school was a lecture by William McDonough, an environmental architect, co-author of the book Cradle to Cradle, and with no doubt the first true genius I have witnessed in my life. William McDonough and Michael Braungart, the German chemist, co-authored the book Cradle to Cradle to change the common understanding of sustainability and design. The lecture itself was focused on sharing their basic ideas and to convince others that we must take action to actively shape the future of our planet. The basic idea of Cradle to Cradle is that reducing emissions or waste Read More
Help Wanted: Transformative Leadership Mindsets to Calibrate Companies for Sustainability
08/11/2011 – 8:21 am
By Christina Meinberg (MBA ’07) Christina graduated from UNC Kenan-Flagler with a Sustainable Enterprise concentration. She brings over a decade of business theory and practical experience and to bear as Founder and Lead Consultant of Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Strategies. Whether they will be CEOs, first-line supervisors, or project leaders, today’s MBAs are tomorrow’s transformative leaders. The challenges that lie ahead – from energy and food security to biodiversity loss to threats of whole systems collapse – are daunting at times, and for even the most progressive and agile companies, the changes that need to be made don’t come easily. As a sustainable business consultant for the last 5 years, I have spent a lot of time observing CEOs and Read More
Method’s Lowry Cleans Up with MBA Orientation Keynote
08/09/2011 – 7:40 am
By Jill Newbold, CSE Marketing and Events Manager On August 3rd, Adam Lowry, the co-founder of the innovative cleaning-product company Method spoke to our first year MBAs as the orientation keynote. His presentation was inspirational as it drove home the fact that it’s OK to be different, edgy and push the envelope to grow a brand and business that you believe can be an engine for global social and environmental change. Method is celebrating a decade of running their company by unconventional “humanifesto” principals like “we use ingredients that come from plants, not chemical plants” and “we think perfect is boring and weirdliness is next to godliness.” Adam discussed the challenges of building the business ($16.00 in the bank, $300K Read More
Viewing the business community as a village member
08/03/2011 – 3:49 pm
In this lastest post in our summer “This I believe” series by Kenan-Flagler undergraduate students who wrote essays concerning their beliefs about the social and environmental responsibility of business, one of our graduating seniors, Sora Jeon reflects on why see sees the business community as a member of a global village. As a senior Business Administration student with just a few days before graduation, my attention veers away from the mere notion of delving into the “real” meaning of things. I’m a bit preoccupied with the goodbyes that must be said and how to fit an apartment’s worth of furniture into a mini-U-Haul van. But after a semester’s worth of learning about “green-washing”, social-entrepreneurs, and the number of earths it Read More